


Dreaming Amid The Stars From The Ground

by Random_Original_Ficcery (Random_Nexus)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Astronauts, Dialogue Light, Dreams, Inspired by Twitter, Not So Distant Future, Other, POV Third Person, Peculiar Methods Of Contact, Prompt Fic, Twitter, Unusual Writing Style, space, space travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 11:13:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16263041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Random_Nexus/pseuds/Random_Original_Ficcery
Summary: She is having trouble sleeping now that she's no longer in space.  Except, as time passes, it seems there's more to it than simple insomnia.





	1. Grounded

**Author's Note:**

> If this looks familiar, it's not new, only revamped a bit and a new chapter added. I deleted the previous version of the first few bits, though I saved the precious few comments that had been made on it. I have such awesome readers! <3
> 
> The first couple of lines to this came from a Twitter 'Fiction Friday' prompt in 2012 or so, and then a few more on another Friday. Later, a 'Writer's Block' prompt on the Writeworld Tumblr brought me back to it. And recently re-reading this after so long apparently sparked more. I don't know how much more will come, but I do know the Muse and I aren't done with it yet.

She repeatedly wakes in a cold sweat, because it’s too quiet; no gentle whisper of the ventilation, no subtle hum of the drives. So she buys a fan and keeps it under the bed on ‘low’, and dreams of stars.

Looking at a night sky from the ground was sometimes like a fist around her heart. Standing there with gravity holding her down while the atmosphere muddied her view of the stars. Still, never seeing them at all would hurt worse.


	2. She Couldn't Sleep

She couldn’t sleep.

Even with the fan whirring softly away under the bed, mimicking the background sound of a ventilation system which isn’t necessary here on the ground, within the planet’s atmosphere; even though it had been working, after a few weeks’ worth of nights spent sleeping through instead of jolting awake, sleep has left her again.

Though there were medications that would _put_ her to sleep, it wasn’t as satisfying when she woke; in fact, this forced sleep usually gave her no dreams, or none she could recall. It hardly felt like sleeping, more like a tiny, controlled coma. No. She didn’t like it.

Physical activity could exhaust her to the point that she would fall asleep, but it didn’t last. Certainly not all night, and she would ache afterward, or have a headache. Again, unsatisfying.

Walking might’ve been nice, but she still fatigued too soon in the ‘normal gravity’ to which she had been born, but which was now as alien as the feather-light pull of artificial gravity had once been. Therapeutic ‘full grav’ sessions, exercising daily, and supplements to keep her bones strong had not been as effective as intended; though it was of little help to her, now, to be one of the subjects of clinical studies on the matter. It still meant walking wouldn’t yet do, couldn’t be maintained long enough to make her sleepy, only physically fatigued—and there she was, back to that again.

Reading helped a bit, but those rare times when she dozed over a book, it was never a long sleep; although the dreams that could come from natural sleep were sometimes nice. She’d dreamt so very vividly out there in the vast empty places between home and the frontier, slept deeply and well, as if something inside her had been perfectly content each night-cycle, no matter what her day-cycles had held. How ironic that she never appreciated it until she lost it, like so many things.


	3. The Memory Of Dreams

She talks about not sleeping to her therapist.

She knows it probably won't help, though she hopes it will. Despite all the talking, there are some things she can't explain; about how not sleeping has slowly come to feel less like the absence of something and more like... more like the _expectation_ of something. Except it's such a nebulous sensation, and felt only on the edge of sleep, which she experiences rarely enough that it doesn't stay with her long. 

It feels weird being in therapy, but she's not stupid, nor stubborn enough to work against her own best interests just because talking to someone about things that seem a bit ridiculous makes her feel foolish. Given all the self-help books, vids, and assorted advice peppered throughout the web, she feels like she should have solved this for herself. Still, she talks.

Several sessions in, she remembers to mention not only how much better she slept before, but how intense her dreams were back then, when she went to sleep and woke up with the stars outside her window. The strange thing is that now she cannot seem to remember the dreams specifically, except that she was often left with the vague memory of floating in space without an EVAC suit, and that she was not alone. No matter how hard she tries — and she does try — she can't call up a memory of a full dream, nor who might have been with her in them. Or what.

Her therapist seems to think this is significant, that if she could remember more of those particular dreams it would help her, but they're blurry at best — especially after all this time — though she does promise to keep trying. Honestly though, it's not just for the therapist or even because it's supposed to help her, it's really because she just wants to know, herself; giving the therapist what she wants is just a side benefit.

What she can't seem to bring herself to say, even though she feels it's probably significant, is that, along with the odd, growing anticipation, she has a feeling — for whatever good feelings do in these situations — that whoever was with her in those dreams, or whatever, it was a big presence; one which made her feel unbelievably tiny while also feeling immensely precious. How could that not come across as some sort of subconscious narcissistic nonsense?

And yet… of all the memories she'd managed to dredge up from her previous dreams, that silly little detail felt anything but ‘little’.


End file.
